Welcome to The Mystical Underground

 The planet goes through cycles of cold and warmth. This is science, not wishful thinking or illusion.  The earth has shifted on its axis in the past. This is science, not speculation. Long before the planet had 7 billion people, dinosaurs were wiped out by climate change. That was part of a cycle.

But climate change deniers will tell you it’s all cyclic, that 7 billion people on the third rock from the sun aren’t having much of an impact on the climate or anything else They will tell you they have lived through worse winters, worse summers, worse weather in years past. And all of that is undoubtedly true. But it doesn’t change the fact that we humans are accelerating climate change.

Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About People Looking At People Looking At Animals in America is one of those books you pick up and buy because you sense there’s something in it that speaks to you. This was a Christmas present I bought for myself and wow, the author, Jon Mooallem, has made the planet – and the effects of climate change – come alive for me.

He wrote the book because of his young daughter, because her world was inhabited by polar bears on her pajamas, by butterflies on her sippy cups, by birds in the cartoons and TV shows she watched. Yet, in the actual world she inhabits and is inheriting, half of all species could disappear by the end of the century.

Think about that for a moment. Half of all species? By some estimates, there are 8.7 million species on the planet now. “Scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered species will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor.”

Mooallem focuses on three species – bears (polar bears primarily) butterflies, and birds. The section on polar bears is fascinating, heartbreaking, and ultimately so infuriating that I had to set the book aside for a few days to calm down. Great chunks of ice floes on which polar bears live are melting.  We’ve all seen the photos – these white bears clinging to bits of ice so they won’t drown. Mooallem even tells us where these photos come from, and how Martha Stewart’s team were there to photograph them for a TV special.

This book is so beautiful, so troubling, and so humanly written that as I read it I kept thinking of the esoteric meaning of the animals he writes about – and I’m not even halfway through it yet. The polar bears: power, predator, vulnerability. Butterflies: transformation, metamorphosis, life after death. Birds: messengers who often act as messengers between the living and the dead.

“It’s hard to square our nostalgia for certain rare species with our resentment of species…that we’ve helped to thrive, intentionally or unintentionally. It’s a thin and erratic line we draw between the wildness that awes us and the wildness that only annoys us,” he writes. “It’s a reminder that we remake the animal landscape on timescales longer than our imaginations are calibrated to perceive or predict, and that we can’t predict how we’ll feel about those changes, either.”

Can you imagine your life without a dog, a cat, a bird, a hamster, a gerbil that brings a smile to your child’s face?

“In the end,” Mooallem writes, “I can’t say I’m terribly optimistic about the future of wildlife. The stories of the polar bear, the butterfly, and the whooping crane had, at times, even lowered my confidence in our ability to see the problem clearly.

 There’s a fluidity to nature that’s not easy to recognize or accept, and climate change will only accelerate and distort such changes.”

The bottom line here is that we humans may not be causing climate change, but the presence of 7 billion souls and all they bring with them are certainly accelerating climate change. I see it in my backyard, in the erratic production of fruits and vegetables. I see it in Florida’s weird winters – 88 degrees in February, with afternoon thunderstorms endemic to summer, not winter. And I am reminded of a dream I had back in the seventies.

In the dream, I’m in a rowboat in tumultuous seas, headed toward the Bahamas because Florida has been inundated and there’s no dry land left. Only years later did I realize it was Water World or The Day After Tomorrow, based on the 1999 book by Whitley Strieber and Art Bell, The Coming Global Superstorm.

 The dream has stuck with me all these years because I had lost everything – family, friends, pets, my home, my base. It was just me in this silly boat, rowing toward another Armageddon because, in the dream, I knew that most of the Bahamian islands are about where South Florida is – three feet or less above sea level. I knew I wouldn’t find a haven, a sanctuary. But I kept rowing. Hope is powerful.

Wild Ones is worth every penny you spend, whether it’s in hardback, paper, or ebook. But to open this book is to open a door you may not want to walk through. Sometimes, denial is the easier path.

People who don’t believe in synchronicity do so because they believe coincidences are random, meaningless events. You could say they believe in the ‘god of randomness—a condition one psychologist calls ‘randomania.’ When they refer to people who find meaning in coincidence, they often say these folks – ie. many of us here – are suffering from ‘apophenia’—the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.

Sure, it’s a handy term for dismissing synchronicity, but synchro debunkers ought to take a closer look at that term, its origins and its actual meaning. Apophenia was coined in 1958 by Klaus Conrad, a German neurologist and psychiatrist, and member of the Nazi Party. He was referring to a serious mental disorder, not synchronicity or epiphanies.

According to a 2010 research paper about Conrad’s work, the term reflects the fact that schizophrenics initially experience delusion as revelation. “In contrast to epiphany, however, apophenia does not provide insight into the true nature of reality or its interconnectedness, but is a process of repetitively and monotonously experiencing abnormal meanings in the entire surrounding experiential field.” For example, a sense of “being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, followed by strangers.”

I can’t help wondering that some of these people experiencing Conrad’s apophenia in Nazi Germany  weren’t crazy at all. It seems there was plenty of reasons at that time and place for people to think they were being observed, spoken about, the object of eavesdropping, and followed by strangers.

Besides that point, Aaron Mishara, writing in The Schizophrenia Bulletin, says that “‘apophenia’ is a misnomer that has taken on a bastardized meaning never intended by Conrad.” In other words, Conrad wasn’t talking about people who experience meaningful coincidence.

Yet, the term is still often used in academia for people who experience synchronicity and other psychic phenomena. From Wikipedia, “In statistics, apophenia is called a Type I error, seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist. It is highly probable that the apparent significance of many unusual experiences and phenomena are due to apophenia, e.g., ghosts, and hauntings, EVP, numerology, the Bible Code, anomalous cognition, ganzfeld ‘hits,’ most forms of divinations, the prophecies of Nostradamus, remote viewing, and a host of other paranormal and supernatural experiences and phenomena.”

Arch-skeptic Michael Shermer, editor of Skeptical Magazine, apparently has come to his senses enough to recognize that people who believe in synchronicity aren’t necessarily headed for the loony bin, though in his musings he would not doubt prefer it that way. (Sorry for reading your mind, Michael.) In fact, Shermer takes the position that most people see such patterns and attribute meaning to them where there is no meaning. Notice how Shermer has decided for all of us that coincidences are meaningless, random events. Instead of calling it apophenia, though, Shermer in 2008 coined the term ‘patternicity’ — “the tendency to infuse patterns with meaning, intention, and agency.”

Psychologist David Luke takes umbrage with the likes of Shermer and the belief that everything is random and those who experience synchronicity are simply misguided – if not becoming psychotic. So in 2011, Luke coined a new term, ‘randomania,’ the tendency to attribute chance probability to apparently patterned data. In other words, the opposite of apophenia or Shermer’s patternicity.

In other words, Luke is taking the opposite point of view of Shermer. In an article in The Journal of Parapsychology, he writes that randomania is seen in people who dismiss psychic phenomena, such as precognition and telepathy, “even if scientific research suggests that the phenomena may be genuine.”

David Luke has a supporter in former Army-CIA remote viewer Joe McMoneagle.  When we told him that skeptics label remote viewing a Type I Error  apophenia – he had this to say:

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“That’s why there have been over 40,000 remote viewings in dozens of experiments replicated in more than a dozen research labs in seven countries over the past ten years; nineteen years of RV support to every major intelligence collection agency in America; and I personally have done more than 100 successful demonstrations of RV [double blind] on major television channels in seven countries – and have demonstrated it using children from two schools located more than six hundred miles apart on Channel Four in Japan; found 50% of the missing people I’ve looked for in Japan [out of 28] over a six year period [all double blind]; supported five physics research inquiries using RV to describe sub-quantum particles, to include the single largest high energy strike on the Earth in our written history by targeting the past; and demonstrated five out of five precognitive targets with unequivocal correct results [judged blind and filmed] . . . . . . I did it all because I suffer from apophenia Type I errors.

“Excuse me; but give me a f-ing break. These people are totally delusional.”

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Whoa, talk about turning the tables! I should mention that if you want to read more about Joe and his remote viewing, Trish and I have an article in the new issue of NEXUS Magazine. In it, we interview Joe about a remote viewing he did that found ancient aliens on Mars. It’s a fascinating story, especially because the target came from NASA.

This tree is in our backyard, a big, beautiful thing with an opening in the middle of its huge trunk where other branches shoot off in many directions. On various occasions, cats have taken refuge in that opening, as have other critters – possums, squirrels – that the dogs can smell.They are endlessly fascinated with this tree, leaping up to sniff and investigate.

But until today, no dog had leaped into that opening, a leap so graceful and beautiful it was as if she had wings. The dog who did what no other dog has done is Kilt, one of two border collies that belongs to our housemate, Cassie.

Kilt is two, incredibly smart, imbued with endless energy, and is affectionate and always eager to play. She’s a rescue. She originally belonged to a family in Alaska and apparently hated it so much that she misbehaved and bit her owner. She was subsequently flown to Florida by her owner to be trained. The trainer works specifically with border collies and other herding dogs and one of the things he does in this training is to teach the dogs how to herd sheep. He knows Cassie because she has been taking Willow to his ranch to sheep herd.

The dogs staring up at Kilt are Noah, our golden retriever, and Willow, Cassie’s male border collie. Noah is three times as tall as Kilt and when he leaps up at this tree, his massive paws against the trunk, he could just step into that opening – if he wanted to. But he seems to be somewhat claustrophobic. And willow, who is 10, has ailing hips.

So today, Rob was outside with the dogs, and as they clustered around the tree, Rob flung his arm into the air and said, “Kilt, go!” And she went. She leaped up and vanished into this tight opening, howling with pleasure, and managed to turn around and look down at Noah and Willow and howled again, as if to say, “Ha, ha, catch me if you can, suckers.”

When they didn’t rise to the challenge, she leaped down – and over both of them – and ran out into the yard, looking for squirrels.

I think there’s a lesson in this for humans. Leap while you physically can. Don’t be afraid to take risks. Life is an adventure. Explore it any way you can!

 In January 2009,  Rob and I were casting around about starting a blog – but couldn’t seem to come up with an idea. Other friends blogged about writing and their books,  but we’ve never been big self-promoters. If anything, that has been our greatest weakness in the publishing business.

So one Saturday Rob went off to yoga and I sat outside and thought about it. What is it that intrigues us the most?  The paranormal, the mysterious, ancient archeology, UFOs, aliens, other dimensions, that answer was easy. But what binds these areas together?

And it hit me: Synchronicity.

On the first date Rob and I had in November 1981, I asked him if he knew what synchronicity was. “Sure,” he replied. “Meaningful coincidence, Carl Jung, right?”

Up to that point in my life, I’d asked a lot of men that same question and I think Rob was the first one who answered it correctly. I decided I wanted to get to know him.

So when Rob got home from yoga that January in 2009, I said that I thought we should start blogging about synchronicity.  He protested, he ticked off reasons why it wouldn’t work, but I knew where to start. I did some research and decided blogger was the easiest format to use. “Let’s at least try it,” I said.

And we did. On February 4, 2009, we published our first post, The Deeper Meaning of Things.

We signed up for a Google alert for synchronicity and began following other bloggers who wrote about the topic, commenting on their blogs. Slowly – very slowly – we made connections with other people who wrote about and had a solid grasp of synchronicity.

In 2010, our blog was hacked by an anonymous commenter, a diehard skeptic about alien life etc.  Three of our computers were destroyed and the hacker took over our blog for five or six hours. He posted an apology to himself that was allegedly written by Rob. By then we knew who he was  and where he lived and filed a report with the FBI. We also bought new computers and moved our blog to WordPress.

That process alone took about five hours, with more than 12,000 posts and comments. Some comments were lost, all the links were lost, and so were our followers. At that point, we’d had nearly 200,000 hits from 175 countries. Fortunately, we had a word file with some of our fellow bloggers URLs and email addresses, and over the next several months were able to re-establish contact with some of them.

So today, on the fifth anniversary of our blog’s birth, I’m happy to report that we’ve written several thousand posts on synchronicity  in its myriad manifestations – with some dog park and political posts tossed into the mix. We’ve met synchro bloggers from other continents whose knowledge and experiences have added to the collective soup about what synchronicity is. And the blog has resulted in four books on the various components of synchronicity and connected us to many people who are experiencing the phenomenon in unique ways.

Skeptics – like the virulent jerk who hacked our computers and blog – serve to remind us of the dying paradigm. And that belief system says nothing and no one is connected to anything or anyone else, that we live in a random universe where nothing makes sense. To the skeptics, we say, We say, Rock on, synchro experiencers! All of us are defining the new paradigm, fleshing it out, ushering in a new understanding.

And thanks to you all for contributing your stories and experiences for five years – and counting!

 Let me state right off that I’m not into football. Never have been. The sports strikes me as incredibly violent. Players sustain injuries that plague them the rest of their lives. That said, they choose to play this sport and, in some instances the players are so great you know they are pursing their passions.

This evening, Rob and I went over to Bruce Gernon’s place to watch the game. Bruce is Rob’s co-author for The Fog, and every year he and his wife Lynn put out quite a spread for the Super Bowl. Lynn is a gourmet cook and they have an 80 inch TV that covers the entire wall in their living room. The quality of the image is so high def you feel like you’re in the stands, that you’re there. I actually enjoyed watching the game.

The minute I saw the Seahawks mascot – an actual hawk – I knew they were going to win. The hawk is a powerful totem – able to see the larger picture from way above the crowd, its vision almost unsurpassed in the animal kingdom. This predator flies at between 20 and 40 miles an hour. And in some of these touchdowns the Sea Hawk players made, the players seemed to be moving that fast.

But it wasn’t until one of the sportscasters mentioned player Russell Wilson and what his father had said to him that I realized there was a deeper message in this game.  His father had said to hm, Why not you? There’s probably nothing more powerful that a parent can say to a child (except I love you). Wilson took this and revised it and said, Why not us?

And the Sea Hawks went on to pound the Denver Broncos at 43 to 8. The message of this triumph, the deeper message about belief and the fact that nearly 200 million people watched this game – that’s a LOT of energy! – emphasizes a synchro. These teams  are from the two most recent states – Colorado and Washington – to legalize marijuana. Weird, huh?

After a dry spell during many months of 2013 when we had to dig into our savings, we’ve suddenly been inundated with offers of new writing projects—ghost-writing a novel, writing an astrology book, preparing the content for an astrology APP. It seems that something has turned in 2014, a breath of fresh air, an aura of abundance. Along with new projects came synchronicity, suggesting we were on the right path, that these projects would keep us going while even bigger things are percolating.  Here’s one such example.

I took a break from working on the astrology book proposal, went to the bank and was standing in line, when it happened. As I waited, the astrology stuff still on my mind, I heard someone say Sagittarius. I looked over to my right and saw three bankers, including one I knew as the bank’s vice president, chatting about their astrology signs. To my surprise, the three carried on quite awhile, noting the traits of their signs and seemingly accepting them as true. I stared, somewhat amazed. Bankers talking about astrology, and not in hushed voices or with any cynicism.

Then I was called to the window and I heard no more astro-talk. I thought it was interesting that it wasn’t the tellers talking among themselves, but the bankers – the professional money people –  ones I wouldn’t associate with astrology chatter.

But polls have consistently shown that 25% of the American population accept astrology. That, in spite of all the efforts over the decades by mainstream scientists and educators to debunk astrology. Twenty-five percent is more than 75 million people…and some of them are bankers.

I saw the brief experience as a perfect synchro for the day, for the month, for the year. I was thinking about astrology – an inner event – when the bankers began talking about the same subject – an outer event. The two came together, outside of cause and effect, and it was truly a meaningful coincidence. The bankers symbolize money, of course. (That’s why I added their sign to the astrological signs for the image above.) And that symbolism bodes well for the new year.

The other day daughter Megan was telling us about her night out in downtown Orlando where she lives. Besides her Paint Nite  job as ‘master artist’ —that’s actually her job title—and her dog-walking business, she and a couple of friends like to dress in bear costumes and go to the downtown bars. They dance and frolic about, pose for pictures with tourists (who probably think the bears are a night-time extension of Disney World), and sometimes get free drinks and substantial tips.

But the other night something somewhat disturbing happened. It was late and some people had too much to drink and suddenly, for no apparent reason, they started pushing the bears— ‘No bears allowed here!’ — and Megan was knocked off her feet. She was okay, and one of the men apologized when he discovered a girl was inside the costume. The bears moved on to avoid any further troubles, and called it a night. She still likes the bear costume gig, but now she’s a bit more wary about doing it.

After we hung up, I turned back to the web page I was reading. It was dense copy, an article with several hundred words showing on the screen. But my gaze zeroed in to a phrase in the middle of the page. It took a moment to register why those words held my attention. The phrase was ‘bears out,’ as in something that bears out.

Of course, bears out, I thought. A synchro. I had just heard a story of what happened when the bears were out. It’s a little one, nothing earth shaking, but the type of synchro that seem to occur daily…if I keep my eyes open. After all, awareness is a big part of synchronicity. Sometimes they’re easy to miss. They pass right by untouched, unconsidered.

Like the story of the deputy chief of staff for Chris Christie who ordered the now infamous bridge closing in New Jersey. Bridget Kelly. Bridge it! I didn’t see it until Gypsy mentioned it in a comment here recently. Duh, how did I miss that? Bridget Kelly meet Anthony Weiner. You two have something in common! – Rob

Mountain Astrology  is a bi-monthly magazine that features some of the most unusual articles  on astrology that I’ve ever come across. In the newest edition – February/ March 2014 – there’s an article entitled A Tour of Personal-Named Asteroids by Alex Miller that is so full of jaw-dropping synchronicities that when I started reading the article, I though it had to be bogus.

In astrology the most common asteroids that are used are Chiron, Vesta, Pallas, Juno, and Ceres. Each one has a particular meaning based, in part, on mythology. But the author of this article uses something called personal-named asteroids, which I’d never heard of – and maybe I’m showing my ignorance here. The asteroid name data came from the Minor Planet Center.

The author states that of the estimated 1.9 million minor bodies in the solar system, a quarter of them have been registered, 108,000 have been numbered and their orbits computed, and more than 17,000 have been named. It used to be that asteroids were named for deities, as the first five I mentioned, with Greek or Roman mythic derivation. But as their numbers have increased dramatically since the 1800s, the deity/mythic tradition was dropped and now, asteroids are named by their discovers, with the approval of the International Astronomical Union.

So, here are the first jaw-dropping examples he gives:

“Bill Clinton has asteroid Monica opposed asteroid Hillary (with asteroids Lies and Lust also prominent).  Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head when asteroids Gabriella and Gifford were in tight square to transiting Mars.

 “Asteroids Osamu and George were together on the Ascendant of the chart for the first plane crash at World Trade Center 1 on 9/11, with asteroid Bush conjoining Uranus and forming a grand trine with the Moon and asteroid America.”

 Even if you don’t know much about astrology, the name synchros here are astonishing. But when you add the astrological angle, they become even more so. In the example about Gabriella Giffords: a square is an aspect of friction and Mars is the planet that governs, among other things, aggression, war, violence.

In the 9-11 example: With asteroid Bush conjuncting Uranus, the planet of sudden, unexpected change, of events that shake us out of our ruts and routines (9-11 sure did that), we have the literal connection of the Bush presidency to 9-11. It happened under his watch. The fact that moon was trining asteroid America at the same moment is another literal connection. The moon symbolizes the masses, the public, and for days and weeks and months afterward, our collective attention was focused on the fallout of 9-11.

The author goes into a lot of astrological detail abut these events that I won’t include here, it’s too lengthy. The other examples he provides, though, are just as mind-boggling. Asteroids James, Holmes, and Aurora “formed eerily prominent patterns in the sky when James Holmes opened fire in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater, killing 12 and wounding 58.”

The author also gives two riveting personal examples  dealing with his uncle and his mother that are equally astounding. The one about his mother is rather lengthy, so here’s the shorter story about his uncle, David Miller, who passed away on March 14, 2011. “On that date, asteroids Davida and Miller were exactly conjuncting transiting Pluto (representing death)… Yes, sometimes it’s really that stark!”

He calls these events “celestial nomenclature synchronicities.” In other words, name synchros.

Miller concludes his article in a way that underscores just how mind-blowing his discoveries were on a personal level. “How can it be that these points – which are casually, often cavalierly, named by total strangers with no astronomical knowledge or intent and not the slightest concept of their eventual application –  will emphatically resonate with people and events for whom these names are meaningful? How can celestial bodies, discovered and named long after the births of those whose lives they will impact, be retroactively inserted into their horoscopes to define relationships?  And how do these asteroids continue to operate, by transit, in unfolding events within which they are significant?

“Well, when I’ve figured that out, I’ll let you know…”

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After reading this article, I started searching for asteroids named Rob, Trish, or Megan…

At least ten years ago, Rob wrote a young adult novel called 7^th Born. It’s set in a fictional South Florida town, Westfield, an equestrian community fashioned after Wellington, where we live, the polo capital of the world.

The protagonist, Marlina, 16, is the seventh born of a seventh born psychic and her talents are starting to manifest themselves. Because Rob wrote the novel under his own name and the protagonist was a female teenager, the novel’s rejections tended to focus on the fact that he was a guy and how could he possibly know what a teenage girl felt and thought?

That critique is somewhat specious. Men often write from a female perspective. One of the most famous examples of this is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. And women often write from a male perspective – take J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter. It’s not about the gender of the character so much as it is the writer’s grasp of the character’s heart and soul, what he or she feels.

At any rate, 7^th Born has found a home at Crossroad Press, where we now have many of our backlist titles and some of our original books, like Aliens in the Backyard and The Synchronicity Highway.  The other day, Rob and I were talking about this novel, which has always been one of my personal favorites.

He decided to  write David Wilson and his partner in the business, David Dodd, to find out where the book was in the formatting stage. It turned out that David Dodd, who does the formatting and the spectacular illustrations for the book (while holding down a full-time job elsewhere) already had formatted it – for Kindle, the Apple store, the Nook – and sent Rob a copy. That in itself was a synchro since the book was sent to Crossroad weeks ago and we’d forgotten about it until we started talking about it.

Rob wanted a copy so he could give it to an expert in the equestrian field who could check it for accuracy. He was particularly interested in accuracy about the nerve agent a corrupt vet uses on the horses that renders them useless as competitors; about the competitions generally; and about horses. Even though we’ve lived here for 14 years, have attended polo matches and competitions and our daughter rides,  we don’t know much about horses, per se.

So once Rob got the formatted e-book, he sent it to our housemate, Cassie, for her iPad. She has worked in the business for more than twenty years and has traveled all over Europe with her various employers and their horses. Cassie’s employers have all been uber wealthy, the clear one percent. They have to be in order to own million dollar horses, to ship them from one country to another for competitions, to pay for grooms, trainers, managers, and oh yes, those vet bills.

Cassie read the book in a couple of evenings – amazing, since she works 12 hours a day. On the night she reached the last few chapters she came running into my office.

“Trish, when did Rob write this book?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a decade ago. Why?”

“Can I read you something?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a synchro.” And she read me a passage in 7^th Born where the ferrier  has left for the horse season and moved back to  the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Cassie paused and peered at me over the rim of her glasses.  “It blew me away. In April, I’m headed for the Biltmore.”

Cassie, like the fictional ferrier Rob wrote about ten years ago, works for the Vanderbilts, and their home out of season is the Biltmore estate in Asheville. Cassie, like the ferrier, will be living on the 8,000 acres of the estate with her two border collies and her horse.

Who could make this stuff up?

Most of us spend about a third of our lives sleeping – and dreaming.  Sometimes our dreaming lives seem whimsical, silly, outrageous. But more often than we realize, our dreams can provide insights into concerns in our waking lives  and can also offer creative ideas.

Brahms, Puccini, and Wagner, for instance, all claimed that their musical ideas often were born during hypnogogic states of consciousness, that strange netherworld we enter as we’re falling asleep. Mary Shelley said her idea for Frankenstein came about as a result of horrifying hypnogogic images. It makes sense.

As we’re falling asleep, we’re entering another state of consciousness, where our logical left brain goes dormant and our right brain, that creative side of the brain,  comes awake.

Stephen King refers to the writing of a novel as “dreaming awake,” and I know what he means. When you’re plugged into a story, the rest of the world vanishes. It’s just you – and the characters, the story, all of it unfolding in a kind of dreamlike state.

Thomas Edison used to take catnaps when he was stuck on a particular problem. When Einstein was stuck in his formulation about the theory of relativity, he supposedly took a nap and woke up with the answer. It’s as if intense left-brain activity needs to take a break at some point. It needs help from the right brain, and despite its resistance to that help, physical exhaustion takes over and the right brain rises to do its thing.

Creativity is an innate ability in all of us and one way or another, finds expression in our lives. Some years ago, an old friend of mine from my childhood in Caracas visited us and remarked how she didn’t feel creative at all. I was shocked. She’s a Sagittarius, and one of the things this sign is known for is its nomadic tendencies, its love of travel. She had spent nearly 20 years as flight attendant for Pan American Airways and has probably traveled to every continent except Antarctica. Travel is your creative outlet, I told her, and her eyes lit up and I knew she suddenly understood that creativity isn’t just about a physical product.

Creativity is an inner journey, a spiritual journey. It might be who we are when we aren’t resisting who we are. Maybe it’s one of the most direct routes to experiencing synchronicity, which tends to occur more frequently when we’re in an intensely creative period in our lives. In 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, creativity is one of the secrets.

During this hypnogogic period of sleep, our physical bodies undergo big changes – intense relaxation, a drop in blood pressure, a slowing of heart and breathing rates. We let go of our conscious lives. And by doing so, we sink into what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, what physicist David Bohm called the implicate or enfolded order of the universe, a primordial soup that births everything, perhaps even space and time.

Pretty cool. Is it possible to dream a better world into existence? A more equitable world where no one goes to sleep hungry? Where war is a tragic anachronism of a prehistoric past?

May the creative flame burn in all of us. Dream on!